Posted
by
Soulskillon Monday March 05, 2012 @05:53PM
from the strict-catch-and-release-policy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Engineers at the University of Utah have designed a new kind of video game controller that not only vibrates like existing devices, but pulls and stretches the thumb tips in different directions to simulate various types of movement. 'We have developed feedback modes that enhance immersiveness and realism for gaming scenarios such as collision, recoil from a gun, the feeling of being pushed by ocean waves or crawling prone in a first-person shooter game,' said the lead researcher on the project, adding he hoped the technology would be adopted in the next generation of gaming consoles."

Read the article and you'll see what kind of games they tried it with. In platformers, it signals when the character has run into a wall. In stealth games, it mimicks the left-right motion of a low crawl. In driving games, it signals when the steering mechanism is offering resistance. And in fishing games, it signals when a fish is biting.

Keyboard and mouse are fine for single player, not so fine for multiplayer when you have mates over. For that, you need gamepads or remotes (e.g. Wii Remote or PS Move). And in a first-person shooter with keyboard and mouse, how do you control your walking speed and angle, other than a mere walk/run toggle or 45 degree increments of forward and sideways?

I use a trackball and can run one way, look another, shot you in the head and then turn back to my original direction or a new one and keep going. ANY PC gamer worth his salt in an FPS can move and shot in two different directions.

Thsi doesn't mean I disagree about "when you have yer mates over" but not everyone wants 10 sweaty guys in their living room to play MP games.

Yes: rotate the camera up, down, left, and right. But because these directions are proportional, one can aim at any speed and direction. The WASD keys, on the other hand, are like an 8-directional digital control pad, and you need a fifth key to toggle between usually two movement speeds (walk and run).

not everyone wants 10 sweaty guys in their living room to play MP games.

I was thinking two to four players, which is an improvement over KBM's one player especially if the people visiting your home can't bring their own family PCs. Maybe KBM on a LAN is best for FPS and RTS and g

Solution: One Mouse for looking and clicking on stuff, one 12 button joy stick for controlling the legs/button mashing. There was that really that hard?
The only thing that makes computer games better than consoles when it comes to input devices is choices. On a computer you can remap inputs to whatever you want on what ever device you want(Except on a few lazy console ports). This allows the user to use what they are most comfortable with. For example I wouldn't dream of using a game pad to play Civilizat

KBM fanboys claim that they can pull off combos in the Street Fighter series with a keyboard, using WASD for movement, UIO for punches, and JKL for kicks, more reliably than on a joystick. It becomes like typing: SDI = fireball; DSDI = dragon punch. The problem comes when player 2 joins because most PC games don't support the Raw Input API, which is the only way to read keypresses on multiple keyboards as distinct from each other. Or does SFIV for PC support it?

keyboard and trackball here. I don't game on something as low res as 1080, not since I upgraded to that 1600x1200 CRT from the 90s.

Anyway the question I have here is what is the tendonitis effect of random force at random positions and times? My guess is its either really good to prevent repetitive stress injuries or really bad when it creates weird strain injuries.

It'll probably only be used as an obnoxious gimmick, but I could see something like skyrim style lockpicking having some real world force feed

I still haven't seen an LCD that can refresh as quickly and completely as an old CRT, let alone when you've got high contrast AND rapid motion.

Kids these days think they have it good, but they have no idea. I like my LCD, but, damn. It ISN'T the same, STILL -- and now, there's no alternative. We have to just wait until some sort of flat-screen tech catches up to CRT levels.

I may have had a lot worse precision playing Mechwarrior (3-4?) a long time ago, but it sure was a lot more fun with my old Logitech Wingman Force joystick than with my keyboard & mouse combo, that joystick had some powerful servos and a steel cables that allowed for some very strong and precise Force feedback effects, just the walking Mech effect was enough to make aiming at far objectives hard.

I may need to dust it off an reinstall the game one more time. Back then I used to have a 3D shutter glasses

The marketplace has already decided that game controllers are already better than mouse & keyboards. It's not like keyboard & mouse technology is anything new, game controllers could and have made them an option for consoles - I remember shooters on the Dreamcast gave that as an option. They weren't popular, so it's no longer a thing.

Anyway we live in a world where you can play Skyrim on your XBox with a controller or on your computer with a keyboard + mouse, so really who cares.

They weren't popular because they radically unbalanced most games in favor of the KB and Mouse players. Basically it became a 'pay for results' sort of thing. Apparently in testing a few games in the last console generation in order to make the games even slightly competitive between the two options, auto-aim had to be turned up to an unacceptable degree for the joystick players.

The problem with consoles is that they are used in locations where a conventional keyboard + mouse setup does not work. They're in living rooms, not on desks. They're basically incompatible with the mouse + keyboard combination because of this. You need a surface for the mouse and a surface for the keyboard. Using a controller is much MUCH more convenient to use even in situations where a mouse and keyboard would be a superior controller alternative.

Anyway we live in a world where you can play Skyrim on your XBox with a controller or on your computer with a keyboard + mouse, so really who cares.

Who cares are indie video game developers who lack the resources to move to Austin, Boston, Seattle/Vancouver, or other cities with multiple mainstream publishers. (I've already explained why in detail several times before.)

Better...at what? The mouse is good for one thing: precisely pointing at things in a two dimensional space. And the keyboard is good at one thing: offering a multitude of distinct binary inputs. Those are pretty versatile abilities, so they do work for a variety of games, but that doesn't mean that they are necessarily ideal, and the list of genres that can't fit neatly into those input models is longer than you seemed to imply.

Granted, they're ideal for some genres. For instance, many MMOs provide a multit

I hereby make a motion that everyone immediately and permanently stop work on all controller innovations that do not involve jacking our brains directly into the computer. Who's with me?

They have a hard enough time getting DRM to work with DVD drives without breaking the entire OS, why the hell would you let them interface with your brain. They'll likely overwrite your respiratory drivers without telling you and due to poor coding, the DRM will shut down one or both of your lungs when daylight savings kicks in.

I suffer rare instances where my thumb joint becomes inflamed and sensitive, bout lasting for up to two weeks (you really begin to understand how much you rely upon your thumb at times like this) usually set off by some minor little stress, which I haven't quite indentified. Odd I can lift heavy weights, do all manner of physical labor (shoveling, sawing, hammering, pushing, pulling, lifting, twisting) with no problem, than some little movement sets if off, like picking up a coffee mug.

Just because you are looking at a particular object in your view doesn't mean you want to select it. Would you want to have your PC's mouse pointer track the saccades of your eyes while you read a comment like this?

having read the article, and looked at the included picture at length, i can honestly say, i've not seen anything exactly like this before, and it seems like a smart idea.

For those of you who do not care to read the article, the way this particular unit works is this:
The normal round thumb stick tops have been replaced with a formed sort of depression that the thumb tip fits into, (think, conformed grip)
in the middle of this space is a hole, with a nub that would only *just* come in contact with the

Maybe the generation after they'll put some sort of gyroscopic motivator inside (gyroscope inside the controller, by using servos to move the gyroscope in one direction, the controller will pull in the other direction).

*edit* Hah! I was right. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/cue/GyroTab/

To appear in the proceedings of ACM CHI 2012, May 2012 --Looks like this is brand new!